March 29, 2014

In the New York Times, Stephen Sestanovich of the Council of Foreign Relations, argues:

No one wants to revive the Cold War. But it offers lessons for today. In the 1940s, the authors of “containment” saw nation building as the key to success. They wanted to check Russian power without war, and believed that across Western Europe, once viable societies were so deeply divided that they might not survive. Those nations’ political and economic models, like Ukraine’s today, were broken. They would not hold together without what Dean Acheson called “the added power and energy of America.”

What made “containment” successful was not the infliction of pain on the Soviet Union. The heart of American policy was to revive, stabilize and integrate countries on our side of the line. Yes, we worried that Stalin had been able to bring down the government in Prague. We worried even more that he might do so in Rome and Paris. Successful nation building eventually dispelled those fears.

The examples of Italy and France as examples of post-WWII nation-building are a refreshing contrast to the usual cliches of West Germany and Japan, which weren't exactly lacking in national fortitude in the early 1940s.

Both France and Italy had huge Communist Parties (the French CP slavishly following the Moscow line, the Italian CP occasionally showing a little self-respect). The U.S. devoted much effort to keeping an election in either country from turning out with a result in which the CP would get the Ministry of the Interior, because there might not be another meaningful election.

France, of course, had among the grandest nationalist traditions in the world, so reviving it after the collapse of 1940 was not quite as challenging as building Ukrainian nationalism. Still, French national restoration ended up requiring a conservative leader (De Gaulle) who was distinctly unfriendly toward America, withdrawing from NATO in 1967. (In turn, this French rightist anti-Americanism set the ideological stage for the leftist leader Mitterrand to turn toward America in the crucial Cold War year of 1983.

As for America's role in Italy, a much weaker nation-state historically, well, the U.S. did what it had to do in terms of subsidizing the Christian Democrats and winking at their vote-garnering alliance with the Mafia to keep the Communists out. But it's by no means clear that the long U.S. Cold War involvement in Italy otherwise did much to build up Italy as a well-functioning state. It's not completely a coincidence that much of the crackdown on the Mafia by heroic prosecutors took place after the Berlin Wall fell.

Ideally, the U.S. would no doubt have liked to help reform Italy so that a big chunk of Italians wouldn't have reason to feel the place was so corrupt that the only solution was voting for Russia's party. But, that's hard to do when you have a friendly pro-American set of politicians already running the place and promising that if you help them out, they can keep the Russians out (which they did).

I haven't thought through all the implications for Ukraine, but the Italian Cold War analogy doesn't seem all that appealing.

116 comments:

The difference is that Italians eventually ended up a full first world G7 country. Ukraine has already very dim prospect of that happening, since their mafiya seems to be worse, and they are already a shittier place to begin with.

Did the American Communist party follow the French, or the Italian model, in terms of slavish adherence to Moscow Center? (One would imagine that the Soviets would try to enforce dogma especially fiercely in the context of Enemy Number One.)

Yeah, that was a pretty near thing. It's not too hard to imagine them going over to the communists in the late '40s. And, of course, our old friend James Jesus Angleton played a key role in making sure that Italy stayed in the Western camp.

Note that "nation building" today doesn't mean what it did back in the early days of the Cold War. Back then, it meant building up a relatively self-contained nation-state with a national economy and national companies/champions and institutions that traded with other countries, but that was relatively closed off in terms of migration and financial capital.

Today, "nation building" doesn't mean anything like that. It means integrating countries into the global economy and treating them as sources and destinations for migrants and international finance capital.

Hunsdon:"Did the American Communist party follow the French, or the Italian model, in terms of slavish adherence to Moscow Center? (One would imagine that the Soviets would try to enforce dogma especially fiercely in the context of Enemy Number One.)"

My understanding is that the American CP was very servile, almost absurdly so.If memory serves, Arthur Schlesinger has some comments in THE VITAL CENTER about how the American CP was never allowed even the smallest amount of face-saving deviation from the official Soviet line.

Totally OT, but related to earlier discussions of conspiracy theories: doesn't it seem odd that one of the key Asian-American politicians that blocked affirmative action in Cali universities was arrested in an FBI sting the same month?

"Did the American Communist party follow the French, or the Italian model, in terms of slavish adherence to Moscow Center? (One would imagine that the Soviets would try to enforce dogma especially fiercely in the context of Enemy Number One.)"

The American Communist served as a direct espionage arm of the USSR. It took order directly from Moscow. When McCarthy was "persecuting" those poor secret Communist Party members in the United States government, he wasn't going after people for following their conscience. He was pursuing people who worked directly for a foreign intelligence organization.

The only reason Russia isn't a backwards irrelevant point of nothing, as befits such a barbaric people, is because it contained a massive fifth column of Communist Agents in the US government and UN right at the time that the lines of the modern world were being drawn up. Most notably passing the USSR American nuclear secrets in the interest of "world peace."

"In 1993, experts from the Library of Congress traveled to Moscow to copy previously secret archives of Communist Party USA (CPUSA) records, sent to the Soviet Union for safekeeping by party organizers. The records provided an irrefutable link between Soviet intelligence and information obtained by the CPUSA and its contacts in the U.S. government from the 1920s through the 1940s. Some documents revealed that the CPUSA was actively involved in secretly recruiting party members from African-American groups and rural farm workers. Other CPUSA records contained further evidence that Soviet sympathizers had indeed infiltrated the State Department, beginning in the 1930s. Included in CPUSA archival records were confidential letters from two U.S. ambassadors in Europe to Roosevelt and a senior State Department official. Thanks to an official in the State department sympathetic to the Party, the confidential correspondence, concerning political and economic matters in Europe, ended up in the hands of Soviet intelligence.[72][76][77]"

Bit odd, then, that Japan seems to be avoiding race replacement....Indeed, given the Japanese example, it seems as though race replacement has more to do with the mind-set of the nation than with American influence.

Anonymous:" sexual revolution"

Odd,then, that America was markedly more puritanical in its mores than, say, the French in the '50s.

Anonymous:"and Hollywood filth. "

Odd, then, that French cinema was far more sexually open than its American counterpart. On the other hand, both French and American cinema are far superior to Soviet cinema...

Anonymous:"...would be surrounded by third-worlders. Just bringing in a little reality here."

Again, Japan springs to mind. Policy can only work on the willing. If the elites are not on board....

Anonydroid at 5:28 PM said: My understanding is that the American CP was very servile, almost absurdly so.

DR said: The American Communist served as a direct espionage arm of the USSR. It took order directly from Moscow. When McCarthy was "persecuting" those poor secret Communist Party members in the United States government, he wasn't going after people for following their conscience. He was pursuing people who worked directly for a foreign intelligence organization.

Steve:"Having the Salvadoran government for a key ally of my country was not one of my favorite things."

Well, as I said, there are always darker alternatives. Compared to El Salvador*, Italy during the Cold War looks almost Utopian.

*Speaking of Cold War Central America, Lucius Shepard ("R&R," "Salvador," LIFE DURING WARTIME, etc) died this month. Looking back on his work, it's amazing how dated it feels, future warfare in Central America as seen through a Vietnam-shaped lens. Any thoughts on the man's work, Steve?

Odd,then, that America was markedly more puritanical in its mores than, say, the French in the '50s.

Odd, then, that French cinema was far more sexually open than its American counterpart

Actually France and its pop culture was still fairly conservative into the 60s.

Odd, that a fellow by the name of Gainsbourg was one of the major initial subverters of that relatively wholesome pop culture when he had a teenage French girl sing a song he made called "Les Sucettes" i.e. "Lollipops" in the 60s. This was quite a scandal in France at the time.

Bit odd, then, that Japan seems to be avoiding race replacement....Indeed, given the Japanese example, it seems as though race replacement has more to do with the mind-set of the nation than with American influence.

The Japanese example supports the point that American influence has been instrumental in race replacement. There are much greater barriers in terms of culture, language, etc. between the US and Japan than between the US and fellow Western countries.

Anonymous:"Actually France and its pop culture was still fairly conservative into the 60s."

Not in comparison to America. French pop culture was seen in the USA as being scandalously indecent:Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot, HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR, Arsan's EMMANUELLE, etc.

Anonymous:"Odd, that a fellow by the name of Gainsbourg was one of the major initial subverters of that relatively wholesome pop culture when he had a teenage French girl sing a song he made called "Les Sucettes" i.e. "Lollipops" in the 60s. This was quite a scandal in France at the time."

Equally odd, then, that one of the major sources of sleaze in French culture in the 1950s was Roger Vadim, the son of a White Russian military officer....

The Ukrainian American community in November and December 1933 organized marches in a number of U.S. cities to protest against American recognition of a government which was starving millions of Ukrainians.[48][dead link][49] American Communists resorted to violence in an attempt to silence the Ukrainians.[48][49][50][not in citation given] On November 18, 1933, in New York City, 8,000 Ukrainians marched from Washington Square Park to 67th Street, while 500 Communists ran beside the parade and snatched the Ukrainians' handbills, spat on the marchers and tried to hit them.[48][49] Five persons were injured.[48] Only the presence of 300 policemen on foot and a score on horseback leading the parade and riding along its flanks prevented serious trouble.[48][49]

In Chicago, on December 17, 1933, several hundred Communists mounted a massed attack on the vanguard of 5,000 Ukrainian American marchers, leaving over 100 injured in what The New York Times called "the worst riot in years"

it's worth remembering how tumultuous standing France back on it's feet was. Charles de Gualle needed to make some concessions to the Left, which *royally* pissed of an already pissed of far right. He was attacked with machineguns and a rocket in an assasination attempt. It's basically by fluke chance that it didn't work.(Mind you, JFK was assassinated, too, but it wasn't a military team acting in well orchestrated concert with non-civilian weapons)Later, de Gualle *so* pissed off the far right Deep State the 2eme REP (the French version of the 82nd Airborne or 101rst Airborne, their ultimate "tough guy" force) all piled into planes with parachutes packed and live rounds in their guns preparing a combat jump into Paris.De Gualle had to go on national TV and basically plead for the army and the people of France not to join the coup.The coup was being plotted out of then French Algeria and they only decided not to take off when the De Gualle loyalists detonated an atomic bomb a little out past the city limits in the Sahara desert to cow them into submission.People forget that within our lifetime, French paratroopers were going to parachute on Paris, and Paris was going to nuke it's own people. THAT is what it took to rehabilitate France

Anonymous:"The Japanese example supports the point that American influence has been instrumental in race replacement. There are much greater barriers in terms of culture, language, etc. between the US and Japan than between the US and fellow Western countries."

Which is another way of saying that Western elites are strongly in favor of race replacement, whereas Japanese elites are not...

For a further illustration of the Western elite love of immigration, take a gander at France, whose immigration levels have been quite high going back over a century.

As for America's role in Italy, … it's by no means clear that the long U.S. Cold War involvement in Italy otherwise did much to build up Italy as a well-functioning state.

Italians are not known for running well functioning states, regardless of what Americans choose or choose not to do. The above statement reminds me of how leftists seem to believe that everything bad that happens in the world is ultimately the fault of white people. Apparently, no one else has any moral agency whatsoever, other than the sanctity that derives from being the target of white oppression. Italians will be Italians, for better or for worse. Is there really all that much about their society that can be attributed to America?

Another possible explanation for the heroic prosecutions after the Cold War is the contemporaneous spread of Eastern European mafia, whether that be Albanian white slavers and drug traffickers, or Russian credit card scammers, etc., who were able to displace or dilute the criminal market share of the Italian mafia. But that’s just a guess.

I don't think the Cold War has a lot to teach us about nation building in the current situation. The Russians don't have an ideology, they just have Russian nationalism, ethnic solidarity, and a willingness to take advantage of weakness.

Appeals to Russian nationalism create their own counterbalancing force by reinforcing, for example, Ukrainian nationalism.

What's needed is an economic model for Ukraine that doesn't involve dependence on Russia, which would allow a plausible Ukrainian armed forces.

Not in comparison to America. French pop culture was seen in the USA as being scandalously indecent:Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot, HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR, Arsan's EMMANUELLE, etc.

The big change of course came with the end of Hollywood decency standards and the launching of "The Sixties" in 1965. The Hollywood Production Code started to go soft in 1964 and came to an end in 1968.

It has started in South Korea. Peter Frost has written about that. He cited survey results which showed the South Korean attitude to race and ethnicity moving towards the US PC "social construct" position. They're importing foreign cheap labor and foreign brides. North Korea is on record denouncing that. The Norks have said that not a single black drop should fall into the Korean blood stream or something like that. They used some sort of a metaphor, as I remember, but the meaning was clear. I'm sure that this has contributed to the anti-Nork fervor in US media.

"Odd, then, that French cinema was far more sexually open than its American counterpart."

I don't know about more sexually open. It was certainly far less stupid. As was Soviet cinema of course.

Bit odd, then, that Japan seems to be avoiding race replacement....Indeed, given the Japanese example, it seems as though race replacement has more to do with the mind-set of the nation than with American influence.

The war was about subjugating Germany and eradicating fascism, national socialism and the non-liberal Right in Europe. Japan was always a side-show that functioned as the "back door to war." Recall that something like the Yasukuni Shrine could never exist in any of the European former Axis nations, but they still have plenty of massive Red Army memorials.

In Chicago, on December 17, 1933, several hundred Communists mounted a massed attack on the vanguard of 5,000 Ukrainian American marchers, leaving over 100 injured in what The New York Times called "the worst riot in years"

I'd say they marched to Moscow's tune.

From this example alone, I can see how communists have gotten the reputation as mind-controlled zombies controlled by an alien intelligence.

Captain Renault: My dear Ricky, you overestimate the influence of the Gestapo. I don't interfere with them and they don't interfere with me. In Casablanca I am master of my fate! I am...Police Officer: Major Strasser is here, sir!Rick: You were saying?Captain Renault: Excuse me.

The Communist Party of the USA uncritically supported every Soviet leader from Lenin to Andropov and lamented the implosion of the Soviet Union. If anyone doesn't care to hear that from right-wingers, there's a good account of it here from a Trotskyite leftist obituary of longtime CPUSA leader Gus Hall:

"I keep remembering Tchaikovsky's music and that the French or Americans have fuck-all that compares."

You embarass yourself with such ignorance. Tchaikovsky has nice melodies that appeal to middle-brow people, but most serious critics rank him below Debussy and Chopin, who was Polish by birth and background but French in every other way. Regardless, classical music nationalism is just a forum for German exceptionalism, since ethnic Germans dominated the genre.

Continental European politics are a lot more complictaed than that, Steve. Basically the socialist/communist movements that are or were found in most Europena states pre-date the Russian revolution and are of an organic nature pertaining to the social conditions that persisted in those states right back form medieval times to the beginning of the 20th cenrury. Basically, Europe was feudal with a mass impoverished peasantry and a few wealthy aristocrats running the place, hence from at least the time of the French revolution onwards, the peasants banded together and refused to accept their lot in life. In the 20th cetury, following wars, rvolutions, huge social turmoil and the advent of universal suffrage, the discontented element in Euro class politics morphed into mass membership left-wing parties that occasionally actually held power - and were instrumental in introducing the welfare state - no European is financially ruined by the sudden accident of a serious medical condition. Perhaps one can even say that even the German National Socialist Party was a manifestation of the desire of Europeans for 'social justice'.

Of course, in these days of rampant American Democrat Party's 'equalities' dogshit, european socialist parties have become deeply corrupted at core. The sick minds that run them in these days of Friedmanite supremacy seem to have one goal and one goal only - the massive, uncontrolled importation of as many third world blacks and browns as possible.

I don't think that Italian politics can be taken seriously as the model or example of what might or might not happen in any nation state.

Basically in italy you have or had a rather bizarre situation in which you had the Catholic church allied with the aristos virtually condemning to Hell ill-educated and superstitious peasants, (of which Italy had tens of millions), into voting for their chosen vehicle The so-called 'Christian Democrats' a right-wing party whose main goal seemed to be to keep the Communists out - and to suck American balls. And then you had the Communist Party - yup the real McCoy full-blown Marxist gamut - which actually made headway with the organized industrial workers of the north, and who basically repudiated the Catholic superstition and dogam than formerly ran Italy. Perhaps they were slavish to Moscow, but one quickly forgets that back in those days before the Gorbachev and Yeltsin corruption set in, Moscow wasn't a sick joke. It was aserious palyer and contender, the wave of the future and a good dog to back in the great fight. Bennery in the UK could be linked with the same general impulse.Also in our discussion of Italian politics, we musn't forget the fascists and neo-fascist. Yup a dirty word and source of embarrassment to Italians, but don't think for a moment that they ever went away and their supporters vanished. It was, of course, Comminists who killed Mussolini, spat and kicked at his corpse, and hung it upside down at a Milan gas station. That alone should give you a clue, namely that extremism at both ends - typical Italian hysteria, if you ask me, is or was rampant in Italy - and is probably only taking a nap right now. The hard left in Italy is still there, but like lefties everywhere their one struggle these days seems to be immigrationism.

Italy is barely a functioning nation state today. There are significant independence movements in Venice (which has a long tradition of independence, and never asked to join Italy in the first place) and Trieste (a Habsburg city that Italy took as war booty after WW I). There is also significant sentiment for a North-South split. Italy is a little like Ukraine in that it consists of one half with a long tradition of Habsburg rule and connections to the West, and another half that was backwards and isolated from Western Europe for centuries.

Anonymous:"The war was about subjugating Germany and eradicating fascism, national socialism and the non-liberal Right in Europe. Japan was always a side-show that functioned as the "back door to war." Recall that something like the Yasukuni Shrine could never exist in any of the European former Axis nations, but they still have plenty of massive Red Army memorials."

Defeating the Nazis was the top priority, true, but considerable effort was made to restructure Japanese society as well. Just take a look at what was done during the era of occupation and reconstruction (1945-52): trade union laws, education reform, de-militarization, granted women the vote, etc.

"believed that across Western Europe, once viable societies were so deeply divided that they might not survive... without what Dean Acheson called “the added power and energy of America.” "

---This kind of overweening arrogance, this crazy deluded belief that without America the sun wouldn't rise tomorrow, will be its downfall. Perhaps this is the price for America's success, which looks more like luck every day.

"Yes, we worried that Stalin had been able to bring down the government in Prague."

---Nonsensical historical confusion or lying. The governments of central Europe, including Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, were brought down at the point of a gun. When your troops are on the ground, you get to choose the government. With Russians (and often Jews) running parallel quasi-military "security departments" in the respective countries, the elections were falsified, and the opposition politicians thrown into prisons. This is elementary historical knowledge.

True, without American intervention and its tremendous aid to the Soviet Union (Lend-Lease was huge), the Germans would have won the war, and German would now contend with English for the world's first language. In other worlds, there would have been no Communism to worry about. But this introduces other difficult questions...

Odd,then, that America was markedly more puritanical in its mores than, say, the French in the '50s.

Anonymous:"and Hollywood filth. "

Odd, then, that French cinema was far more sexually open than its American counterpart. On the other hand, both French and American cinema are far superior to Soviet cinema...

Lol. What kind of adolescent mind sees "filth" and "more sexually open" as perfect synonyms? You're also confusing "puritanism" with "conservative sexual culture" and these are most emphatically not the same things. It is not a contradiction to say that the French are both more conservative (about sex roles, family life, etc.) than Anglo-Saxon nations, and less puritanical about sex. So yes, the more puritanical nation can export a "sexual revolution". Sexual revolutionaries aren't necessarily sexy. (In fact, that "necessarily" probably isn't necessary.)

Odd, that a fellow by the name of Gainsbourg was one of the major initial subverters of that relatively wholesome pop culture when he had a teenage French girl sing a song he made called "Les Sucettes" i.e. "Lollipops" in the 60s. This was quite a scandal in France at the time.

Basically in italy you have or had a rather bizarre situation in which you had the Catholic church allied with the aristos virtually condemning to Hell ill-educated and superstitious peasants, (of which Italy had tens of millions), into voting for their chosen vehicle The so-called 'Christian Democrats' a right-wing party whose main goal seemed to be to keep the Communists out - and to suck American balls. And then you had the Communist Party - yup the real McCoy full-blown Marxist gamut - which actually made headway with the organized industrial workers of the north, and who basically repudiated the Catholic superstition and dogam than formerly ran Italy. Perhaps they were slavish to Moscow, but one quickly forgets that back in those days before the Gorbachev and Yeltsin corruption set in, Moscow wasn't a sick joke. It was aserious palyer and contender, the wave of the future and a good dog to back in the great fight.Bennery in the UK could be linked with the same general impulse.Also in our discussion of Italian politics, we musn't forget the fascists and neo-fascist. Yup a dirty word and source of embarrassment to Italians, but don't think for a moment that they ever went away and their supporters vanished.It was, of course, Comminists who killed Mussolini, spat and kicked at his corpse, and hung it upside down at a Milan gas station. That alone should give you a clue, namely that extremism at both ends - typical Italian hysteria, if you ask me, is or was rampant in Italy - and is probably only taking a nap right now. The hard left in Italy is still there, but like lefties everywhere their one struggle these days seems to be immigrationism.

I glanced at this paragraph, but decided not read it in full, because it begins with "Basically..." and contains at least two "yups" as well as the phrase "suck American balls".

"Odd,then, that America was markedly more puritanical in its mores than, say, the French in the '50s.

Odd, then, that French cinema was far more sexually open than its American counterpart

Actually France and its pop culture was still fairly conservative into the 60s.

Odd, that a fellow by the name of Gainsbourg was one of the major initial subverters of that relatively wholesome pop culture when he had a teenage French girl sing a song he made called "Les Sucettes" i.e. "Lollipops" in the 60s. This was quite a scandal in France at the time."

We usually have a hard time understanding that much of pop culture are droppings which their creators call "art." Like two-year-olds.

Of course there is "art" worth conserving for the ages, but the most of the 20th c. can be called the "pre-Twitter age." Each decade seemed worse than the last until we all became Twits.

For a long time I thought Danes were totally amoral because Denmark was where they made porn. Come to find out, they were not more so than anyone else; they just had no censorship and that brought a lot of foreign perverts in. The French have a long tradition of accepting sexual philadering with grace, under certain conditions. However, if a girl wanted to get married she knew the rules that applied at least prior to the church and civil event.In short, people who live in the shadows of 1000 year old churches, ignore tradition less easily than people in places that cast few such shadows (metaphorically speaking). That may be why they're turning old churches into restaurants and apt. buildings in England.

A very religious friend who lived in Switzerland during the 60s and 70s, noted that sex was discussed as a normal part of being human and cultured(!), with none of the dirty leer that so often accompanies the subject in the U.S. Women went topless on the French beaches and Swiss lakes(!), but even so, only a minority. Looks weird. Especially the Swiss lake topless crowd. But then I'm a schizo American.

Which is, of course, not Japan. Do try to stay on the subject at hand.

Soviet Apologist:"Peter Frost has written about that. He cited survey results which showed the South Korean attitude to race and ethnicity moving towards the US PC "social construct" position."

Which also means that the ideological groundwork was already in place. Cf, for example, the role of Christianity in Korea....

Soviet Apologist:"They're importing foreign cheap labor and foreign brides. North Korea is on record denouncing that. The Norks have said that not a single black drop should fall into the Korean blood stream or something like that. They used some sort of a metaphor, as I remember, but the meaning was clear. I'm sure that this has contributed to the anti-Nork fervor in US media."

One rather supposes that the rather....extreme nature of the NK regime might have something to do with their bad press as well...

Soviet Apologist:"I don't know about more sexually open."

You don't?You are clearly lacking in basic cinematic knowledge. Of course, you are the fellow who thought that there were millions of PCs floating around in the '80s Soviet Union. Try looking up Bardot, Brigitte sometime.

Soviet Apologist:" It was certainly far less stupid."

MMMM, the French critics of the '50s disagree with you on that point. Try flipping through old copies of cahiers du cinema. The French film-makers of the '50-'60s revered the great Hollywood masters: Howard Hawks, Hitchcock, John Ford, Orson Welles, Buster Keaton, etc.

Soviet apologist:" As was Soviet cinema of course."

Don't know about that. Soviet cinema was an unending odyssey through turgid dreck. Frankly, French and American cinema are infinitely superior to the sludge that staggered out of the Soviet Union.

I'm surprised that the French Foreign Legion planning to attack Paris and arrest de Gaulle after he decided to give up Algeria didn't get a mention until the middle of the comments.

The French Right, imho, has always had some serious chops to it. You had 100,000+ people marching against queer fake marriage, and SPPX priests being bludgeoned in the street by the police. How many politicians in the US know about the SPPX? The weak spine of the US Catholic Church and its bishops is disgusting in the face of some of the fortitude shown by other priests across the globe.

Anonymous:"No "dear boy" at the end? Retreat? Embarrassment in the face of mockery?"

Well, dear boy, seeing as how you fellows were complaining to Steve about how my Tory-Pansy manners were so shocking to your tender sensibilities, I thought it best to refrain. I wouldn't, after all, want to scar your delicate psyches. Of course, if any of you dear boys are desirous of a return to form, I would be only too happy to oblige.

"Bit odd, then, that Japan seems to be avoiding race replacement....Indeed, given the Japanese example, it seems as though race replacement has more to do with the mind-set of the nation than with American influence.

...

Again, Japan springs to mind. Policy can only work on the willing. If the elites are not on board...."

Perhaps the key difference is having a large enough 5th column already inside the country - especially one with a lot of financial and media influence?

If so then if the Japanese / Koreans etc want to avoid their countries being dismantled in the future in the same way the western countries are being dismantled they need to maintain absolute ethnic control of their banking and media.

Italy is a little like Ukraine in that it consists of one half with a long tradition of Habsburg rule and connections to the West, and another half that was backwards and isolated from Western Europe for centuries.

People tend to forget how dicey things were. France was in a state of almost endless turmoil : the First Indochina War, the struggle in Algeria, the collapse of the Fourth Republic, the OAS, the Paris Massacre in 1961, the events of 1968, etc.

"He [de Gaulle] was forced to suppress two uprisings in Algeria by French settlers and troops, in the second of which (the Generals' Putsch in April 1961) France herself was again threatened with invasion by rebel paratroops.[87] De Gaulle's government also covered up the Paris massacre of 1961, issued under the orders of the police prefect Maurice Papon.[88] He was also targeted by the settlers' resistance group Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) and several assassination attempts were made on him; the most famous is that of 22 August 1962, when he and his wife narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when their Citroën DS was targeted by machine gun fire arranged by Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry at Petit-Clamart.[89] Visitors to the French capital around this time heard, "the eerie sounds of car horns, beating out the five count of Al-gé-rie-Fran-çaise".[90]After a referendum on Algerian self-determination carried out in 1961, de Gaulle arranged a cease-fire in Algeria with the March 1962 Evian Accords, legitimated by another referendum a month later.[91] Although the Algerian issue was settled, Prime Minister Michel Debré resigned over the final settlement and was replaced with Georges Pompidou on 14 April 1962.[92] France recognised Algerian independence on 3 July 1962, while an amnesty was belatedly issued covering all crimes committed during the war, including the genocide against the Harkis. In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 French settlers left the country. After 5 July, the exodus accelerated in the wake of the French deaths during the Oran massacre of 1962." (WIKIPEDIA)

"The Paris massacre of 1961 was a massacre in Paris on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French police attacked a demonstration of some 30,000 pro-FLN Algerians. Two months before, FLN had decided to increase the bombing in France and to resume the campaign against the pro-France Algerians and the rival Algerian nationalist organization called MNA in France. After 37 years of denial, in 1998 the French government acknowledged 40 deaths, although there are estimates of over 200.[1]"

"At the time when the independence came into force in 1962, 900 000 European-Algerians (Pieds-noirs) fled to France, in fear of the FLN's revenge, within a few months. The government was totally unprepared for the vast number of refugees who caused significant turmoil in France. The greatest part of the Algerians having worked for the French were deliberately left behind, though de Gaulle himself estimated a ″bloodbath″ among them once the French would be gone. In particular the Harkis, having fought as soldiers on the side of the French army, were regarded as traitors by the FLN. Between 50 000 and 150 000 Harkis and family members, disarmed by French officers before they left, were murdered by the FLN or lynch-mobs, often after being abducted and tortured. About 91,000 managed to flee to France, some with help from their French officers acting against orders, and today form a significant part of the Algerian-French population."

"The Algerian War has long been treated as a taboo by French authorities; only in 1999 the national assembly passed a law officially allowing to use the term guerre d'Algérie ("Algerian War") instead of a number of previous euphemistic paraphrases.[6] Today, the conflict is widely regarded as a prototype of a modern asymmetrical war with regular military fighting informal insurgents recruited from the civilian population. The unconventional, often illegal and human rights violating counter-insurgency measures applied by the French military against the FLN, namely torture, forced disappearances and illegal executions, were widely regarded as militarily successful, but also to have significantly weakened the French position due to the ensuing moral and political controversy. Similar measures were later employed in a number of conflicts, especially during the 1970s and 1980s era of right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America battling and often killing any potential opposition in what became known under the Argentinian term Dirty War (Guerra Sucia). According to a number of sources, this happened with the official assistance of French military advisors and also exiled OAS-members. Early during the occupation of Iraq, the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict of the Pentagon used the famous 1966 semi-documentary movie The Battle of Algiers as a show case for successfully defeating an insurgency and yet losing the "war of ideas"." (WIKIPEDIA)

One thing to bear in mind regarding the Algerian War. Unlike, say, the French struggle in Indochina, this was not a purely colonial matter. Algeria was part of France. Giving up Algeria meant removing part of the nation.

No musical narrative is in any way acceptable without including the great Italian composers and what person of even minimal musical good taste would leave out Frenchmen like Gombert, Couperin, or Rameau. And a decent musical narrative would be just fine if it just stopped dead at 1820.

Sure, some limited compositions of Erik Satie and Wagner can be appreciated but most Romantic music is nothing but bilious string sections heaving about in a sickening fashion and Strauss, Sousa and their ilk just wrote the pop tunes of their day.

The less said or especially the less heard of 20th Century "classical" music the better. 12-tone scales? John Cage? Don't make me laugh.

"As for the Americans, Anglos are notoriously deficient in Classical music. Just glance at Murray's list of musical giants on page 134 of HUMAN ACCOMPLISHMENT. No one from America or Britain cracks the list."

Between Byrd and Britten, Britain was virtually music free, like its daughter nation, America. You can't have Calvinism and music, and music didn't return to the British Isles until the ardent Low Church began to recede.

Anonymous:"It wasn't equally odd, which is why "Les Sucettes" i.e. "Lollipops" - having a teenage girl sing that song on national TV - was so scandalous at the time."

More a matter of laying the groundwork. Vadim blazed a trail for Gainsbourg. From Bardot to "Les Sucettes."

On the other hand, one could also see it as being just another chapter in the rich history of French sleeze: de Sade, Vadim, Arsan's EMMANUELLE (although that was apparently written by Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane), Anne Desclos's STORY OF O, Pierre Louys, etc.

"It's not completely a coincidence that much of the crackdown on the Mafia by heroic prosecutors took place after the Berlin Wall fell."

No, the prosecutors started to go after the Mafia in the 80s while the Italian communist party was making huge gains. The killing of Falcone and Borsellino happened 10 years afterward, because it took that long for the verdicts to be upheld. Yes, Sicilian politicians were close to the mafia, but Sicily is not that important in national terms and the communists were a presence even in Sicily. Pio La Torre was killed for proposing an anti mafia law in the 1980s. Check out Toto Riina It was the communist analysis that the ruling class was in league with the mafia, and behind Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, Gladio, false flag red terror, Propaganda Due Banda della Magliana ect. But it's a load of nonsense. I have been reading the books on this for decades.

Anonymous:"Perhaps the key difference is having a large enough 5th column already inside the country - especially one with a lot of financial and media influence?

If so then if the Japanese / Koreans etc want to avoid their countries being dismantled in the future in the same way the western countries are being dismantled they need to maintain absolute ethnic control of their banking and media."

American immigration policy in the 19th century was all about population replacement: Irish, Germans, etc. This was long before Jews had anything resembling their post-1945 clout in the US.

Anonymous:"And yet, Putin speaks German and English and doesn't have that horrible Russian accent unless he wants to."

Mastering languages is only rather weakly correlated with intellect. The stupidest girl that I knew in graduate school (yes, since we are talking about graduate school, that would still place her well above the national average)had the greatest knack for languages of anyone that I have ever personally known.

As for Putin being able to speak English sans accent, I have seen no evidence of this. Indeed, from what I can gather, his English is fairly weak. On the other hand, as befits a man who was stationed by the KGB in Germany, his German is good.

Somebody told me that there was a conspiracy in a beer hall between the dominant German general in the Great War, Ludendorff, and the young Adolf Hitler to take over the government of Bavaria in 1923. But that's just those conspiracy theorist nuts for you.

For one thing, Russian, even during the Soviet Union's post-'45 peak, was never a serious rival to English.

I can only speak for Hungary, but I think it's true for all non-USSR Eastern Block countries.

Except for a very small number of specialists, Russian was totally worthless for all Hungarians. Soviet troops were totally confined to their barracks and training grounds, and had very little if any contact with the population. Other than soldiers, there was a relatively large number of Soviet advisors in Hungary until maybe 1956 (their numbers peaked between maybe 1949-53), but after that even their numbers diminished. In short, nobody could use or practice their Russian language skill anywhere.

Russian education was compulsory, but quality of education was famously low, and it was totally unpopular with students: learning Russian was essentially learning a totally unusable skill, which was coincidentally also the language of the hated or at best disliked occupiers. Little wonder even Russian teachers didn't learn it properly. (In turn, they wouldn't have taught anyone even if the students wanted to learn. But of course, students also had little motivation.)

Where people could use Russian, like in all of the republics of the former USSR, people did indeed learn it. I guess a hypothetical German world empire would not have expanded so much energy in trying to restrict contact its population had with the rest of the world, so probably German would have been learned by a great many people. Because it would have been useful for them.

In Ukraine, that means building Galician based perceptions of what it means to be a Ukrainian and what language to speak and what religion to follow, which is hopelessly intertwined with Nazi inspired organiztions harking back to the halcyon day of June 30, 1941 when L'viv was "liberated", and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

The alternative to this would be to build up Ukrainian Cossack identity in the old Zaporzhian Sich Cossack Hetmantate around Kiev, Dniepropetrovsk, and Kharkov. Of course, that identity is essentially Russian and is hopelessly intertwined with co-identity with the Don, Terek, and Kuban Cossacks next door.

This really brings to the fore what a strange project this whole nationhood building exercise in Central Europe is. Nationhood building is aimed primarily at avoiding the reconstruction of a trans-national Catholic state like Austria-Hungary or a trans-national Orthodox state like Russia or the Byzantine Empire. This is in fact explicit US policy, and it was British policy from 1815 to 1918 as well, leading to the Crimean War, 1878 Balkans Crisis, the 1912-1913 Balkans Wars, and World War I.

In response to a proposal by Pius XII during WWII to recreate a Catholic Slavic state in central Europe that would incorporate Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Galicia, and Lithuania, the US War Department noted:

"... leading Catholics all over the world do not hold the view that it is in the interests of Christianity and the Church to have 'Catholic' States, but stress freedom for the Church everywhere, whether Catholics are in a majority in a particular country or not. There is a definite tendency to avoid the repetition of the opposition between 'Catholic' and 'Protestant' States which did so much harm in the past. They can hardly favor the idea of a Catholic Slav Federation."

For the vast majority of history, these small supposed "ethnic" groups in central Europe were part of much larger transnational empires primarily grounded in common religious identity - Catholic in the case of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwelath and Austro-Hungarian Empire, Orthodox in the case of Byzantium and Russia, and Islamic in the case of the Ottomans.

The mistake of Ukraine is to try to smash together Greek Catholic Galicians and their identity and language (which was shared by Ukrainians in Volhynia and Kiev until 1830 when Russia forced the Greek Catholics back to Orthodoxy) and to foist that upon the Orthodox and Russian speaking east for no real purpose or aim other than weakening Russia. Such a tenditious and artificial project is bound to failure or violence.

A great truth is contained in this phrase: "a shprakh iz a dilekt mit an armey un flot - A language is a dialect with an army and navy" (Max Weinreich)

Prior to Napoleon, things in central Europe had been heading in a perfectly natural direction. Austria and Russia had been dividing up Poland and Turkey in Europe (Rumelia) essentially along religious lines - Catholics to Austria and Orthodox to Russia, and the ultimate result of this exercise if left undisturbed would have seen Russia successfully push its way to Constantinople and annex Moldavia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Serbia along the way while Austria woud have taken in central Poland, Albania, Dalmatia, and Herzegovina. The Congress of Vienna confused this by giving central Poland to Russia, aiming Austria instead at Italy, Bosnia and Serbia, while artificially preserving Turkey after its repeated defeats.

One thing to bear in mind regarding the Algerian War. Unlike, say, the French struggle in Indochina, this was not a purely colonial matter. Algeria was part of France. Giving up Algeria meant removing part of the nation.

It really says something about the disaster that is birth control, abortion, and 3rd world aid, that 70 years ago, it was white French people migrating to North Africa and settling (just like it was Russians settling in central Asia, Britons settling in South Africa and Rhodesia and Kenya), and that today, the flow is completely reversed, and all the propaganda is that white women should avoid having children and send all their money to help the starving darkies of the third world.

Putin speaks very good German. He rarely tries to speak English and has a strong accent in it. At joint press conferences with English-speaking politicians he sometimes talks (in Russian) without waiting for the translation of what the other guy has said. This implies that he understands English better than he speaks it.

Andrew said: Such a tenditious and artificial project is bound to failure or violence.

To the neocons that's a feature, not a bug. They want various types of Slavs to fight each other for the same reason that they want various types of Muslims to fight each other: divide and rule.

The neocon-oligarch alliance is now cracking down on both west Ukrainian nationalists and Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine. I'm hoping against hope that this will eventually force these two types of Ukrainians to join forces against their common enemy on the understanding that they'd peacefully secede from each other after they win.

Banderites are now realizing that Vicky and co. only used them as tools and that they have no allies anywhere in the world. Even the Poles hate them. There is a chance that this will bring their ambitions down to Earth, towards a vision of a west Ukrainian nation state with a capital in L'viv. Both east Ukrainians and Russia would surely be OK with that.

American immigration policy in the 19th century was all about population replacement: Irish, Germans, etc. This was long before Jews had anything resembling their post-1945 clout in the US.

You are using the inflammatory term population replacement and trying to associate it with 19th century immigration policy which is not the case. In the 19th century we were rapidly expanding our nation across an entire continent as well as undergoing an industrial revolution. We needed large amounts of settlers and workers.

The WASP establishment had no intention of giving away their nation. And they chose as immigrants Germans, Irish and other Euros who were at least similar to them. And you will note the less similar the European group was, like Greeks, the less they trolled for their immigrants. They were not opening themselves up to Orientals, Arab muslims or Africans.

In fact by the 1920s they realized they had probably taken in too many immigrants, AND fearing that they were on a collision course with real demographic change, passed the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, and later the1924 Immigration Act, which deliberately put in place quotas on nationalities to preserve the ethnic makeup of the nation, AS it was recorded in 1890!

At that time some of the strongest opposition to those acts were from Jews and a young Congressman named Emanuel Celler. Celler would go on to spend the next 40 years of his House career fighting these acts that culminated with his signature legislation, the Immigration Act of 1965.

Today's immigration policy is about demographic change and it's based upon an ideology that the more diverse and unrelated a group is to the historic American nation, the more they should be favored entry. Just look at the Visa Lotto which deliberately offers 50K plus visas each year to nations designated as being historically underrepresented in American immigration patterns. By its very design, it seeks to alter the ethnic makeup of this nation.

Additionally this nation is filled. There are no more territories to settle and populate. Off-shoring and automation are reducing the need for workers. Trying to compare immigration policy from the 19th century to the past 30 years is not valid. As is calling immigration policy of the 19th century deliberate demographic change. Back then the leaders noticed, and enacted legislation to combat it. Today the leaders consider it a feature, not a bug, and denounce any who would oppose it. It is definitely not the same.

The neocon-oligarch alliance is now cracking down on both west Ukrainian nationalists and Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine. I'm hoping against hope that this will eventually force these two types of Ukrainians to join forces against their common enemy on the understanding that they'd peacefully secede from each other after they win.

This would be the natural course of events if people power in the west gets the backing of Russia with such an understanding at the outset. What would remain to be negotiated would be the exact extents of Novorossiya, and whether or not Ukraine would get to maintain sea access at Odessa and take over Transnistria, and what would happen to Kharkov and Dnieperopetrovsk, which have Ukrainian identity but support Russia and speak Russian.

Banderites are now realizing that Vicky and co. only used them as tools and that they have no allies anywhere in the world. Even the Poles hate them. There is a chance that this will bring their ambitions down to Earth, towards a vision of a west Ukrainian nation state with a capital in L'viv. Both east Ukrainians and Russia would surely be OK with that.

Yes, they realized the jig was up with the Paet-Ashton phone call.

http://national-action.info/2014/03/

"The Estonian Foreign minister has already suggested that the official opposition may have hired snipers to fire on their own demonstration – if true then heads will role."

And what about the great Italian opera composers: Verdi, Puccini, etc?

As for WASPs wanting to destroy the nation, revealed preference is pretty strong.

Mitt Romney has a Black grandson. And so apparently does Bill Clinton. I would say that the reproductive path of the kids of the pre-Obama Democratic Presidents shows a strong revealed preference: None for Truman (childless), none for JFK (both his kids left none themselves), none for LBJ AFAIK, none for Carter (his daughter AFAIK is childless), none for Clinton, with Chelsea Clinton famously adopting a Black baby boy.

Meanwhile, it is only better for Republicans compared to the abysmal record for Democratic presidents. You don't look at say Ronald Reagan or Ike or Nixon and see enormous fertility among their kids. Only the Bush clan seems to reproduce.

And this matters. If anyone ought to have a reproductive advantage it would be the kids of a President or ex-President.

You embarass yourself with such ignorance. Tchaikovsky has nice melodies that appeal to middle-brow people, but most serious critics rank him below Debussy and Chopin, who was Polish by birth and background but French in every other way. Regardless, classical music nationalism is just a forum for German exceptionalism, since ethnic Germans dominated the genre."

Your ignorance is apparently beyond embarrassment. Tchaikovsky was a great composer, whose works are a mainstay of the classical repertoire. What a few snotty critics think is irrelevant (What do critics really know about music? Do they write music themselves?).

Then there is also Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khatchaturian.

OK yes Steve, the Bavarian Fascisti's participation in der putsch was part of a conspiracy, though hardly a tight clandestine conspiracy that remained a secret.

All you need to know about Hitler: Rienzi. His other favourite was Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: "Although Die Meistersinger is a comedy, it also elucidates Wagner's ideas on the place of music in society, on renunciation of the Will, and of the solace that music brings in a world full of Wahn (which may be translated into English as "illusion", "madness", "folly" or "self-deception"). It is Wahn which causes the riot in act 2 — a sequence of events arising from a case of mistaken identity, which can be seen as a form of self-delusion. Many commentators have pointed out that Sachs in his famous act 3 monologue Wahn, Wahn, überall Wahn is paraphrasing Schopenhauer when he describes the way that Wahn, or self-delusion, drives men to behave in ways which are actually destroying them".

Spengler said Hitler was not a hero, but a heroic tenor.

Lincoln had kids but his last descendant died in 1985. Pres descendants could make an interesting post.

Spanish isn't encroaching on anything. As the language of Mestizo hicks, it has no cultural presence.

What country do you live in? I live in America and am not that old. Yet in my lifetime I've seen Spanish encroach upon English as a sort of second official language of the USA. Whether it is having to press 1 for English, offering government services in Spanish, having all the signs in my local Home Depot in two languages, having Presidential candidates create Spanish language ads, having SAP audio on my TV, etc., etc., I've seen Spanish encroach upon what was once a universally accepted English-speaking nation. For a peasant's language that has no cultural significance, I am sure seeing a lot of it where I saw none before.

America would have been vastly better off without large-scale Catholic immigration. --anonymous

I don't know about that one, what with Protestantism drifting to its natural poles of Jimmy Swaggart and Gene Robinson. Catholicism looks pretty sane and centered in comparison. Even the worst policy of the US Church, on immigration, isn't universal. You don't see the bishops of Mexico and Brazil spouting such nonsense.

My dad grew up Congregationalist. Mercifully, he didn't live to see the insane asylum that institution turned into. The Lutheran church that hosted my son's preschool last year now holds "same-sex weddings" upstairs. He got out just in time!

Reg Caesar:"I don't know about that one, what with Protestantism drifting to its natural poles of Jimmy Swaggart and Gene Robinson. Catholicism looks pretty sane and centered in comparison. Even the worst policy of the US Church, on immigration, isn't universal. You don't see the bishops of Mexico and Brazil spouting such nonsense."

US Catholic hierarchy promotes large-scale immigration as a matter of asabiyyah. Immigrants from Mexico and Central America mean more Catholics in the USA. Asabiyyah is less of a factor in Mexico and Brazil, where the societies are already Catholic.

anonymous:"What country do you live in? I live in America and am not that old. Yet in my lifetime I've seen Spanish encroach upon English as a sort of second official language of the USA. Whether it is having to press 1 for English, offering government services in Spanish, having all the signs in my local Home Depot in two languages, having Presidential candidates create Spanish language ads, having SAP audio on my TV, etc., etc., I've seen Spanish encroach upon what was once a universally accepted English-speaking nation. For a peasant's language that has no cultural significance, I am sure seeing a lot of it where I saw none before."

Elite Hispanics in the USA all know English. They mock Hispanics with poor English skills.When elite Hispanics in the USA stop knowing English, then it will be time to worry.

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

My Book:

"Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency." - John Derbyshire Author, "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" Click on the image above to buy my book, a reader's guide to the new President's autobiography.